Homeworld: Beacon 3

by Valerie Parv

  What else is new in this crazy business, she thought, releasing a heavy sigh. She recalled a sign that had been on the wall of Rosie’s office as long as Shana could remember. The impossible done at once. Miracles take a little longer.

  A miracle was exactly what they were going to need.

  Chapter 22

  “Move away from the work station.”

  Elaine jumped, the order catching her by surprise even as she backed away until she felt a wall behind her. She’d been so involved in her task, she’d forgotten to scan outside the lab for signs of trouble. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “But you know who I am.”

  “I know you can find me when you want to.”

  He inclined his head in agreement. “My name is Kamarg Iroi,” he said. “I’m usually called Kam.”

  “I’m told my name is Elaine.”

  His look sharpened. “Told by whom?”

  “I don’t know. Something in my head said it’s my name.” The truth as far as that went.

  “You don’t remember anything else?”

  She lifted her chin. “You can probably answer that better than me.”

  “So you do know I’m an adept?”

  She shook her head, grimacing at the pain the movement caused her. “The word means nothing to me.”

  “I don’t believe you. I felt your touch. You knew I was outside the supply room in the medical bay.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I don’t know how I knew that either.” Or why you didn’t give me away to the medic.

  “I didn’t wish to see you further hurt.”

  Can you read my mind? she thought experimentally.

  His closed expression told her nothing. But how else had he answered a question she’d only asked in her mind?

  Kam stepped closer, his look going to the water dripping off the work surfaces on to the deck. “It seems I was misguided.”

  “Your captain was going to make the volcano erupt.”

  His eyes gleamed. “How could you know that?”

  “I heard you and the medic talking about it,” she tried valiantly.

  Taking her chin in his hand, he forced her to look at him. “The volcano was not discussed outside this laboratory. Nor was there any way for you to get into this place without employing beacon skills.”

  His grip made turning away impossible. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then you deny being a beacon?”

  “I deny being anything other than a person called Elaine. Everything else is a blank.”

  “Yet you knew to come here and damage the equipment.”

  She damped down the small surge of triumph trying to swell through her. Amateur though her efforts had been, they’d harmed the equipment, perhaps making an attack on the volcano impossible. Why the discovery mattered so much, she didn’t know.

  “I sensed … a connection with the volcano. Maybe it’s where I live,” she said.

  “Or your memory is starting to return.”

  He released her so abruptly that she fell against the wall and had to work at staying upright.

  “I don’t want to invade your mind, but I must know what you remember.”

  A shudder ran through her. “Please don’t.”

  “I will wait until the captain returns,” he conceded.

  Kam hadn’t given her away in the medical bay, so perhaps he had more compassion for her than he wanted her to see. Or than he wanted his captain to see.

  “Why do you care about how I feel?” she asked. Why don’t you quit while you’re ahead, she thought, angry with herself. Looking a gift adept in the mouth made about as much sense as appealing to a better nature he might not possess.

  “An adept is sensitive to the feelings of others, especially beacons.” His admission came with seeming reluctance.

  “But you’re more sensitive than other adepts, aren’t you?” She wracked her brains for information about the adepts. The details were lodged somewhere in the scrambled circuits, but her mental search revealed nothing. “If only I could remember …”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “Either you’re a superb actor or your memory is genuinely lost. Even if I try to take your thoughts, I will get nothing.”

  “Finally something we can agree on.” She pressed both palms to her throbbing head.

  “You are in pain.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Genius,” she snapped, hurting too much to care about angering him. “You wouldn’t have something I could take?”

  To her surprise, he moved closer and lifted her hands away from her face. Fear layered itself over the pain.

  “What are you doing?”

  Without answering, he placed his fingers on her temples. His touch was light but heat flared through her. The warmth traveled like wildfire along her nerves, burning out most of the pain as if it had never been.

  When he took his hands away she sagged against the work station, resisting the urge to touch her temples. They would feel hot, she didn’t doubt. “What did you do?”

  “A simple technique of mind touch.”

  “It worked,” she said shakily. “Thank you.” Turned up to a higher level, his simple technique could have burned through every synapse in her brain, leaving her much worse than amnesiac. Terror gripped her and she resolved not to let him inside her head again. Exactly how she would stop him, she wasn’t sure.

  She looked at the water dripping from the keyboards. “Will you tell the captain what I did?”

  “I won’t have to. She will know.”

  Because no-one else on board would have done it. “I had to stop her sabotaging the volcano.”

  “If you remember nothing, what does the volcano matter to you?”

  An echo of the pain shot through her head, making her catch her breath. “I don’t know. I only know that it does.” She lifted her head, letting him see the defiance in her eyes. “You people brought me here, hurting me in the process. You destroyed my memory, perhaps forever. What else do you expect from me?”

  “Spoken like a true beacon,” he said. “Part of you remembers what you are, and where your loyalties lie.”

  How could he be sure when she wasn’t? She automatically reached for any thought that might give her a clue. Looking into an abyss would be more revealing. The blackness inside her mind was dizzying, and she grasped the work station to steady herself.

  “I won’t let you beat me,” she said as much to herself as to him.

  He came closer, his hands reaching for her again. Groping behind her, she found one of the saturated key pads and grasped it. She flooded her mind with images of the volcano to avoid telegraphing her intentions, then swung the heavy pad toward him with all her strength.

  *

  “The Kelek cruiser has landed.”

  At Rosie Granger’s statement, Shana nodded. Along with Shana’s aide and her security chief, she waited at the center’s science facility a few hundred meters away from main mission control. June shouldn’t really be back on duty yet, but she had insisted that the walking cast on her injured leg wouldn’t get in the way of doing her job protecting the governor. Shana had been shocked by the damage the tsunami had done to the space center. And she was seeing it after clean-up efforts had begun.

  “I hope we aren’t making a mistake letting the Kelek captain land in Atai,” Rosie continued.

  Shana looked up from checking messages from Timo. “We need the diversion while Timo puts his plan into action. It may not be a good plan, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  On the way here, Rosie had briefed Shana on progress at Black Tree’s Flight Assembly Hangar, where the shuttle had been taken for the kind of modifications Timo was making. He was at the hangar now, overseeing the conversion of his plane to carry the shuttle into low earth orbit.

  The one person unaccounted for was Adam, and Shana’s heart ached for him. Timo was a good man and single-minded when he wanted something done, but Adam’s formidable brain might have given the plan
a greater chance of working.

  She shouldn’t underestimate Timotea Rooke, she reminded herself. She could have used him here to deal with the Kelek captain. Timo might not have dealt with an alien before, but his diplomatic experience would have stood them in good stead.

  Shana had never anticipated being the first human to greet someone from another planet. She’d implored Prince Lorne to take on the job, but he’d referred to the rapport that Shana had already established with the Kelek captain – if rapport it was. And Lorne had a point. Captain Zael might not appreciate being met by a stranger. Lorne hadn’t needed to remind Shana that she had already dealt with beings from another planet in the beacons.

  None of this made Shana’s next job any easier. She might indeed have Lorne’s vaunted rapport with the Kelek captain, but meeting Zael face to face was another matter. Shana quaked with nerves, every sense on alert. Only years of experience in the police and politics kept the turmoil off her face. If her legs felt close to buckling, that was for her alone to know.

  June informed Shana that Captain Zael was leaving her cruiser. Dragging in a steadying breath, Shana tugged her suit jacket down and followed her security chief out the door.

  Flanked by two members of her crew, possibly pilots and certainly bodyguards, from their vigilant poses, Captain Zael waited on the landing strip. The vaguely barrel-shaped vessel was about nine meters long and fitted with what appeared to be engines on top and to each side of the fuselage. But Shana’s gaze wasn’t on the vessel, as much as the female standing in front of it at the foot of retractable stairs.

  It seemed to Shana that the Kelek captain returned her curiosity in spades. Given the havoc the woman had wrought on Shana’s province, she thought Zael should have known what to expect from her first sight of humans. Or did she prefer to aim her weather weapons at beings she knew little about?

  Putting her anger aside, Shana stepped forward and waited for her counterpart to do the same. Zael was half a head taller than Shana and solidly built, her muscles outlined under a charcoal tunic and pants slashed with side seams of silver. Her shoulder-length hair was iron gray, whether by genetics or age, Shana didn’t try to guess. Apart from her hair, Zael appeared close to Shana in age.

  In spite of her humanoid appearance, Captain Zael was not human and couldn’t be judged by any of Shana’s familiar standards, she reminded herself. As commander of her vessel, with formidable weapons at her disposal, she also was not to be underestimated.

  Shana had thought hard about what she might say and, in the end, opted for simplicity. Whatever their differences, Zael’s mission was a tough one for any parent. Shana would try to make it easier for her, and worry about everything else afterward.

  “Captain Zael, greetings on behalf of humanity.”

  The captain stepped forward. When her guards moved to follow, she stopped them with a slash of her bladed hand. “I appreciate the opportunity to perform the OnsThenn for my son.”

  What the devil was OnsThenn? A ritual? A ceremony? Some kind of bloody revenge for her son’s death?

  Before Shana could ask, the captain added, “The OnsThenn is a prescribed period of intense mourning my people observe upon the death of those closest to them.”

  “How long is this prescribed period?”

  “As you reckon time, ten hours, ten minutes, ten seconds.”

  With an effort, Shana kept the relief off her face. She had her miracle from the last place she would have expected it. Ten hours wasn’t much but it might give Timo the breathing space his team needed to get the shuttle into the air. “The truce will hold for that time,” she assured Zael.

  The Kelek responded with a gracious nod. “You can provide a suitable place?”

  Anticipating some kind of ceremony, Shana had ordered the capsule containing the body of the captain’s son placed in a chapel close to the cryogenic facility. Without more clues as to what was appropriate, she had followed her instincts.

  “Is there anything special you need?” she asked.

  “Only the time and place.”

  “Come with me.”

  She saw Zael make a slight hand gesture. One of the guards fell into step behind her, the other assumed a post outside the cruiser, not taking a chance on the humans commandeering her only means of return to her vessel.

  The chapel was non-denominational, minimalist in design and intended to be acceptable to people of all faiths. Ryn Zael’s frozen body lay in a specially designed capsule with only his face visible through a clear plate.

  Shana stood back and let the captain approach the capsule alone. Not by any flicker of expression or posture did Captain Zael reveal the turmoil she had to be feeling. Her shoulders stayed back, her spine rigid.

  At another signal, the guard dropped back two paces. The captain moved on. When she reached her son’s bier she placed both hands, palms down, on the capsule. A single shudder rippled through those set shoulders and Shana’s heart went out to her.

  They may be enemies, but no mother should have to perform such a hideous duty. Not sure whether to go or stay, she stilled herself and waited for Captain Zael.

  After what seemed like an age, the captain turned around. “I wish to be alone with my son now.”

  “Of course. Do you need food or drink during your vigil?”

  “No. It is customary to fast for the ten-hour.” She made another slight gesture and the guard retreated to the chapel foyer. His stern look at Shana and June was practically an order for them to do the same.

  Shana didn’t protest. She gathered that the vigil had now begun, and checked her watch. They had until early morning before anything would change.

  When they were outside the chapel, she turned to June. “Stay here and keep an eye on things.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “With Timo at the Flight Assembly Hangar. We have ten hours. I want to make them count.”

  Chapter 23

  Before Elaine’s weapon could connect with Kam’s skull, she found her action blocked by an arm she hadn’t seen him raise, so quickly had he reacted. Reverberations traveled through her as if she’d rammed a steel rod instead of flesh and blood.

  He took the key pad from her nerveless fingers and returned it to the work station while she watched in horrified fascination. What would he do now?

  “I can’t permit you to harm me,” he said, as if she’d asked him the time of day.

  “You know why I had to try?”

  “Yes, but you must also know that your thoughts are plain to me.”

  So much for flooding her mind with distracting images. What was the point of challenging someone with his power? “You won’t stop me,” she said grimly, lifting her chin. Sooner or later the adept would be too preoccupied to read her intentions. Then her turn would come.

  “I don’t intend to stop you,” he said.

  She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m your captor, but I am also your protector.”

  Did he mean he was willing to betray his people on her account? He had to be setting a trap for her.

  “No betrayal is involved. I am merely putting things to rights.”

  She sank onto the chair in front of the workstation, resisting the urge to bury her face in her hands. The renewed pain throbbing through her brain was a shadow of its previous self, but still got in the way of clear thinking. She must be missing something here.

  “Why would you help me?”

  “Because I am an adept. I don’t know the full answer yet, only that harming you is wrong.”

  Had he been human, she’d have credited basic humanity with his urge to help. Given what he was, she had no clues. “Can you send me back to Earth?”

  “The captain’s cruiser is the only means, and I don’t have use of it for now.”

  Suddenly the activity on the cavernous deck below made sense. For whatever reason, Captain Zael had left the ship in the smaller vessel. To make peace with Garrett’s people? That seemed unlikel
y, given Zael’s plans for the volcano.

  “What about the way I arrived here?” Elaine asked.

  “You would not survive a second journey.”

  Elaine couldn’t hide the fear rippling through her. She had no wish to endure a repeat experience of being picked up and brought to the ship, the ordeal blanking her memory of everything before that. “So what do we do? Land this ship on my planet?”

  Odd that she should think of Earth as her planet now. She couldn’t remember how she’d felt before she was picked up, but sensed that she hadn’t always thought of the Earth as her home. If it wasn’t, where was? Her injured brain supplied no answers.

  “Storm is not designed to enter a planet’s atmosphere,” Kam said. “We must penetrate what you call the flux.”

  Elaine narrowed her eyes. His reference to the flux triggered an instinctive reaction, although the details remained stubbornly out of her mental reach. “I have a feeling I shouldn’t agree to that suggestion.”

  “It isn’t a suggestion. I’m stating a fact. I understand why you wouldn’t want to take me to the flux, since that’s the whole point of Captain Zael’s mission. But it’s the only way you’ll retrieve your memory, and resolve the stand-off between our peoples.”

  “My memory could still return by itself,” she said.

  He took a few paces across the laboratory before turning back to her. “Possible, but not likely.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your injuries were quite traumatic. The medic doesn’t expect them to heal on their own, at least not quickly.”

  “And you don’t think Captain Zael will allow me the time I need.”

  They both knew it wasn’t a question. The adept’s gaze remained on her, thoughtful and slightly sad, as if he regretted what he’d be expected to do. He’d said he was both her captor and her protector. Which one would respond to his captain’s orders? Elaine wasn’t eager to find out.

  *

  Garrett had never seen a group of people work so intensely. Timo’s people had blended seamlessly with the staff from Black Tree and a group of specialists sent from the designers of the Global jet. After putting their collective heads together to discuss what had to be achieved in the limited time frame, they’d split into teams, each to their own jobs. Preparing the shuttle and plane for flight would normally take a week or more. They had a day at best. More than Garrett had expected before Shana’s call.